What Do You Mean?
by Elena2
Summary: When the muggle and magic worlds collide, the result is not always desired ..


All characters you recognise belong to JK Rowling; this story is strictly not for profit!  
  
"What do you mean, it might not be easy?"  
  
Disgust and impatience filled the room: Hermione had rigged up the telephone to be audible wherever you were. She could never understand why muggles thought it was advanced to have a plastic keyboard stuck to your ear, even a mobile one.  
  
"Hermione, she's your mother."  
  
"Yeah, I know, I didn't mean."  
  
"Get a grip, little sister. Get yourself over here, fast. Sod your precious job. OK?"  
  
"Yeah. Sure. I'll be there."  
  
The phone slammed down, shaking the light bulbs. A disadvantage, that. Perhaps some kind of filter could block it. It might be interesting to try an Inanimate block- get rid of non-human noises that way.. .Hermione shook herself angrily. Stop avoiding the issue. Stop trying to get out of this.  
  
Your mother is dying. You have to go and see them all. And you don't want to, do you?  
  
  
  
As she rounded the corner, a nurse slipped into her way.  
  
"Good afternoon, dear. Who have you come to see?"  
  
"Mrs Granger. Er, please."  
  
"You'll have to see doctor first, dear. Could you just sit down for a minute."  
  
What the hell for, muttered Hermione, he can't even cure the one he's got, there's no point in him looking at me. But Pete and Carol sat down obediently on the sharp plastic chairs, apparently happy to wait until the voice of authority told them to move. She had forgotten how much she hated being told what to do. It didn't really happen any more. Sure, she had a framework for her Ministry work- there were rules and boundaries. Several had been set that morning, come to that.  
  
"I am not keen on your going undercover, Miss Granger."  
  
"It's not undercover work, Minister. I need to go to see my mother. She's very ill."  
  
"She's a muggle, I believe?"  
  
"They all are. I'm the only one who's not."  
  
"Then you are undercover. I can't protect you in a non-magic world. And you have very important work to do here. Still, I suppose it's part of the risk we take in employing people with muggle responsibilities."  
  
Hermione smiled sweetly. Five years ago, no-one would have dared air that kind of prejudice. But as the war continued, people were getting more protective, more aggressive. A wizarding family didn't have people dying of cancer in it. You weren't expected to waste your time on hospital visits. There was the unspoken suggestion, well, of course, you're vulnerable too, aren't you. You'll probably catch something yourself and we'll all have to do your work while you fiddle about trying to get better. Bloody muggle-borns, always catching flu.  
  
"She's very ill. It shouldn't take long". Even as she said it, the callous disloyalty burned her mouth and she felt, please god, don't let my mother ever know I said that.  
  
"We'll be in touch via s-mail. Get yourself a log-in. I suppose your relations do have internet access?"  
  
"I'm sure they do. They're dentists."  
  
He didn't even think it was funny.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
Doctor appeared, nodding at them. He seemed deeply embarrassed to see them.  
  
"Well, yes, of course. Um. Good to see you. I'm afraid it would appear that Susie has got herself a little infection. She is very weak of course. Have you seen someone in intensive care before?"  
  
"No." But I have seen people with their souls sucked from their living bodies, will that do?  
  
"Nurse, go in with um, Miss Um would you?"  
  
The whole pointless system dropped away as Hermione stood by her mother. Grey-white skin flapped around her face, falling back against the pillow. Open mouth showed grubby teeth and smelly breath. Bet it's the first time Mum hasn't flossed in years, she thought, then turned to share the flash of black humour with her brother and sister-in-law. But they were looking sadly at the pile of sentimental cards on the table. The rest of her mother was hidden but tubes of unmistakable blood flowed out from her. With the infection her major organs were failing, rotting away, turning to slime and blood while she lived. And being nicely tidied away, of course, this is a hospital.  
  
"Talk to her, dear." The nurse whispered. "She'll hear you. Hearing is the last sense to go, you know. They can hear right up to the end."  
  
How the hell do you know? thought Hermione, if they're too far gone to tell you so. God, this is embarrassing. But she bent over her and said the kind and loving things that she had been brought there to say, thanking her for a childhood she only half remembered and certainly only half enjoyed, telling her she was the best mother ever and trying not to think when was the last time she actually trusted her with a secret.  
  
As she looked up, Pete was watching her. He wasn't smiling.  
  
  
  
  
  
Hermione's father had always been polite, to his children, to his wife, to his patients. Now he was lost at a pitch of suspense and frustration where there was nothing he wanted for himself any more. He was certainly in no state to deal with Louisa.  
  
" I think when this is all over" she hissed at Hermione, "Your father should have a complete break. I know a very exclusive little property in the South of France. A dear friend of mine rents it out- oh, only to nice families, dear. You know what I mean. No foreigners."  
  
"No foreigners?" asked Hermione, somewhat baffled. "In France?"  
  
"Don't be silly, dear. I mean people like us. Not from, you know, away. Just fellow Conservatives and their families. Well, your father's almost family to me, dear." She offered Hermione a plate. "Do eat, dear. I've made a couple of quiches and some salads. Sweetcorn and beetroot in cream and cauliflower with raisins."  
  
"Pete," whispered Hermione, "what the hell is Louisa doing here?"  
  
"Trying to marry Dad." muttered Pete with a flash of their old relationship. "Patronising cow."  
  
I need chocolate, thought Hermione, and slipped out to the kitchen. The cupboards revealed sugar free snacks and fruit. Bloody dentists, she groaned, and yelled, "Dad, can I borrow your computer? I want to check my emails."  
  
"He says, yes," came the reply.  
  
Upstairs Hermione logged in and found a message waiting for her. S-mail looked like an ordinary-indeed, incredibly dull- muggle newsfeed. Someone with a sense of humour had sent this one, she noted. On the other hand, the civil service update on regulation of dental equipment did give plenty of scope for the s-mail system. S-mail stood for sense-mail. As you read the message, the coded words would stand out, not before your eyes but before your senses. Depending on the emotion used to encode, the reader would feel surprised, angry, happy or amused as each relevant word passed before his eyes. And of course, the potential for love letters was so hackneyed that most employers put a ban on private s-mail at work. Couldn't have the workforce swooning with emotion all day. You had to read fast, though, or you lost track of the message. Which meant that s-mail could be a very intense experience. It was always a nasty moment finding out what they had used to encode. Hermione took a deep breath.  
  
"Darling, can I have a word?"  
  
Her father had come up the stairs so quietly she had not noticed. Tears were in his eyes and he swayed a little from shock and lack of sleep. He sat beside her and she forced herself to put an arm round him. She hated to be touched but she knew it meant a lot to other people.  
  
"Hermione, you know you went to that school".  
  
Oh shit, thought Hermione, now it's coming.  
  
"Darling, you have magic powers. I know you have. Please, please, can't you do something?"  
  
"Oh, Dad,"  
  
"Your mother would have done anything for you, darling, please help us."  
  
He was weeping now and Hermione had to fight a physical urge to wince away. Surrounded by wallpaper, on a flowery duvet, pictures around her, the view from the window of a dozen identical dull brick houses, and now hugged by her dear but god so dull father, squashed by patterns, swallowed up by irritating design and buzzed by emotion, how can I be so superficial, she thought despairingly.  
  
"Dad, I can't. It doesn't work. You have to be a witch for magic to work. I can't cure her." Liar, she thought to herself, plenty of spells do work on muggles, what about modifying their memories. And if you're so clever, I bet you could find a way round this. If you wanted to.  
  
"So it was all a waste of time then? There's nothing you can do?"  
  
A shadow fell across the door. Hermione looked up to see Pete standing there.  
  
"Bollocks." he said.  
  
  
  
They had finally gone. It had been a terrible row. Pete had said all the things she had hoped no-one would say. That she was too good for them now, that she didn't want to help anyway because magic was for her precious friends, not for boring people like her family, that she had barely bothered with her mother in life so why expect anything in death. She sat, stunned, quiet at last. So this was her family. These were the people who were supposed to love her, no matter what. She realised, finally, hearing the disdain in her brother's voice, that secretly she had always relied on having them love her, even while she found them dull and took them for granted.  
  
But if no-one has to love me, what's left? Who is there that understands me? Who will always see why I do something, how I tick, what I mean? Is there anywhere now where I know I am always welcome, always understood and valued? Do I have to be on guard for the rest of my life?  
  
What had been the point, then? Why be so clever, so gifted, if it ends in isolation from your family, isolation from the people who could be your friends, lonely for ever because your wavelength is so narrow that you can never find a soulmate?  
  
O God, she whispered miserably, give me just one true friend. Please.  
  
Her eyes drifted across the s-mail and suddenly she received a blow of pain. She had caught the word "Urgent". Bastards, she thought, as she pulled herself towards the screen. They could have used any emotion to code this and done me a favour with some light relief.  
  
But they had chosen shame. 


End file.
